Annotated bibliography part 1: process ontology
1996a "Individuen als Prozesse: Zur prozeß-ontologischen Revision des
Substanzparadigmas," Logos 5 (1995), 303-343.
The paper presents in outline a program of ontological revision, arguing
both a methodological thesis in favour of a pluralist-constructional conception of
ontology, and a substantive thesis in favour of a process ontology. Working from
case studies in the contemporary debate about numerical, qualitative, and
transtemporal identity, I identify six deep-seated substance-ontological
presuppositions. Using the negations of these presuppositions as constructional
heuristics I sketch the outline of a new ontological scheme based on processes or
“dynamic masses.” As I try to show in the paper’s last section, the theory of
dynamic masses offers new and promising routes to undercut the characteristic
dichotomies in the debate about individuation, universals, and persistence.
1996b: "Non-countable Individuals: Why One and the Same Is Not One and
the Same," Southwest Philosophy Review 12 (1996), 225-237.
It is a common presupposition in ontology (metaphysics) that a so-called
'principle of individuation' amounts to a principle of counting. Against this
presupposition I argue that the predicates 'x is the same individual as y' and 'x is
one with y' are neither co-extensional nor co-intensional. Non-countable entities
such as masses or stuffs (or the referents of nouns in classifier languages) also
fulfill the requirements of individuality. I suggest that Leibniz' 'principle of the
identity of indiscernibles' (PII) should be taken as a principle of individuality,
rather than as a principle of the individuality of countables.
1996d, "Existence in Time: From Substance to Process," in: Perspectives on
Time. Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science, ed. by J. Faye, U. Scheffler, M.
Urs, (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 143-182.
Contemporary analytical ontology, to a large extent, is still committed to
basic assumptions of the substance-ontological tradition. The contemporary
discussion about transtemporal identity or persistence in particular still
proceeds from within a framework of substance-ontological principles which
largely remain implicit. These implicit premises or presuppositions of the
debate impose problematic constraints on ontological accounts of persistence. I
identify five of these formative principles and show how they enter the
discussion about endurantist and perdurantist explanations of persistence. I
then offer a new explanation of persistence that abandons the mentioned
problematic presuppositions, operating within the framework of a new process
ontology called 'Dynamic Mass Theory.'
2000d: "The Dynamic Constitution of Things," in: Faye, J. et al. (eds.), Facts
and Events. Poznañ Studies in Philosophy of Science. 72, 241-278.
Due to its epistemological primacy the notion of a thing is the primary
explanandum of any ontological theory of the language of common sense. In this
paper I offer a tentative process-ontological definition of things within the
framework of Dynamic Mass Theory (DMT). I begin by setting out the basic
elements of DMT. First, deriving some motivational support from the linguistic
phenomena of aspect shift I introduce the new category of (subjectless) activities
or 'dynamic masses' Second, I sketch graphically how one might in DMT
recategorize the classical categories, i.e., conceive of events, things, stuffs,
properties and relations etc., as subtypes of dynamic masses. Third, I state some
principles of the DMT mereology on activities, a non-standard mereology with a
non-transitive part-relation. On the background of this brief overview over DMT
I work dialectically towards a definition of the common sense notion of a thing.
Things, I claim, are transportable countable particulars which serve a shapedependent function. I show that DMT can fairly smoothly accommodate this
notion of thinghood. In conclusion I point at ways in which the sketched DMTaccount can contribute to a satisfying ontological treatment of the persistence
and material constitution of things.
2002 “Quanta, Tropes, or Processes: On Ontologies for Quantum Field
Theory,” in: Kuhlmann, M. et. al., (eds.) Ontological Aspects of Quantum
Field Theory, World Scientific: Singapore, 53-93.
My primary aim in this essay is to assist philosophers of science working on
the ontological interpretation of QFT by highlighting some questionable assumptions
imported into the debate from the ontological tradition. After some methodological
preliminaries, I will state a set of presuppositions, ubiquitous within historical and
current ontological research, which are by no means laws of thought but the
contingent commitments of an ontological research tradition I call the ‘substance
paradigm’. Some of these presuppositions, I argue, made their way into the debate
about indistinguishability, particlehood, and individuality within the quantumphysical
domain. This has the effect, among others, that philosophers of physics misrepresent
the case of ‘indistinguishable particles’ as having decisive bearing on the question of
whether ‘quantum particles’ are individuals or non-individuals. I then consider
various extant and possible strategies of gaining an ontological interpretation of some
core concepts of QFT by modifying the presuppositional depth-structure of the
ontological tradition: P. Teller’s “quanta,” trope theory and Whitehead’s ontology of
occasions, which each operate with concrete particular entities that are not
individuals. But one might also take the opposite route. In the final section I sketch
an ontology based on concrete individuals that are not particular entities, the theory
of free processes (APT). APT is a genuinely new ontological scheme where a large
number of traditional ontological presuppositions are rejected; in consequence it has a
variety of features that prima facie would seem to allow for a straightforward
application in quantumphysical domains. Whether this impression is justified remains
to be seen; my primary aim here, to restate, is to argue not for a substantive but rather
for a methodological thesis: that the ontological interpretation of QFT must pay
critical attention to existing theoretical biases within ontology.
2004 " Processes and Particulars," in: Process Metaphysics, ed. by M.
Weber, Ontos-Verlag, Frankfurt, 113-135.
Despite his attempt to leave substance-ontology behind, Rescher operates
with ‘processes’ which have the ‘classical’ combination of category features—
they are concrete, countable, particular and determinate individuals. For this
reason the “process theory of things” suggested in chapter 3 shares crucial
shortcomings of its substance-ontological rivals. I argue, first, that Rescher has
not shown how a process-based bundle theory of things could avoid the
necessitarian commitments of a Leibnizian bundle theory. Second, I argue that
the suggested process-based explanantion of persistence presents some
improvements over common ‘perdurance’ accounts but, like the latter, cannot
make sense of transtemporal identity statements, a crucial requirement for any
satisfactory theory of persistence. That process-ontology has other options I
show by contrasting Rescher’s particularist scheme with ‘free process theory’, a
new process ontology that tries to stay clear of substance-ontological
presuppositions. Free processes are ‘dynamic stuffs,’ combining categorial
features of activities and stuffs: they are concrete yet non-particular,
determinable individuals. In conclusion I sketch the treatment of persistence
statements in free process theory to support my thesis that a process ontology is
better off without ‘classical’ individuals.
2008 "Beyond Endurance and Perdurance: Recurrent Dynamics", in: C.
Kanzian (ed.), Persistence.Ontos. Frankfurt. 121-153.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the reader to a new account of
persistence developed within such a new ontological framework, General
Process Theory (GPT), based on a new ontological category called general
processes, or, less ‘technically,’ dynamics. Unlike other attempts to promote
process-based descriptive frameworks, GPT is firmly committed to the
methodology of analytical ontology. Within GPT, persistence is the strict identity
or sameness in time of an entity that occupies a spatiotemporally extended region.
Thus the new account straddles the traditional disjuncture between endurance
and perdurance theories, but it does so in the sense of leaving both of these
theory types behind, since it operates with a different notion of individuality that
is not tied to particularity (i.e., necessary unique locatedness). To motivate the
new approach I begin by highlighting some of the presuppositions that constrain
the solution space for the ‘problem of persistence’ in questionable ways. Then I
offer a sketch of the core ideas of General Process Theory, and finally I
adumbrate how ontological counterparts (‘truth-makers’) for assertions about
persistence and change can be formulated within this framework, highlighting
some of advantages vis-à-vis extant endurance and perdurance accounts.
2009 "Forms of Emergence in General Process Theory", Synthese
166:479-512.
General Process Theory (GPT) is a new (non-Whiteheadian) process ontology.
According to GPT the domains of scientific inquiry and everyday practice consist
of configurations of ‘goings-on’ or ‘dynamics’ that can be technically defined as
concrete, dynamic, non-particular individuals called general processes. The
paper offers a brief introduction to GPT in order to provide ontological
foundations for research programs such as interactivism that centrally rely on
the notions of ‘process,’ ‘interaction,’ and ‘emergence.’ I begin with an analysis of
our common sense concept of activities, which plays a crucial heuristic role in
the development of the notion of a general process. General processes are not
individuated in terms of their location but in terms of ‘what they do,’ i.e. in terms
of their dynamic relationships in the basic sense of one process being part of
another. The formal framework of GPT is thus an extensional mereology, albeit a
non-classical theory with a non-transitive part-relation. After a brief sketch of
basic notions and strategies of the GPT-framework I show how the latter may be
applied to distinguish between causal, mechanistic, functional, self-maintaining,
and recursively self-maintaining interactions, all of which involve ‘emergent
phenomena’ in various senses of the term.
2010 "Particulars", in: R. Poli, J. Seibt (eds.), Theory and Applications of
Ontology, Vol. 1. Philosophical Perspectives, Springer.
According to the standard view of particularity, an entity is a particular
just in case it necessarily has a unique spatial location at any time of its
existence. That the basic entities of the world we speak about in common sense
and science are particular entities in this sense is the thesis of “foundational
particularism,” a theoretical intuition that has guided Western ontological
research from its beginnings to the present day. The main aim of this paper is to
review the notion of particularity and its role in ontology. I proceed in four
steps. First, I offer a brief reconstruction of the tasks of ontology as “theory of
categorial inference in L”. An ontological theory states which (combinations of)
entity types or categories make true L-sentences true; the features of the
stipulated categories explain why L-speakers are entitled to draw certain
material inferences from the classificatory expressions of L. Second, I draw
attention to the fact that since Aristotle this theoretical program typically has
been implemented with peculiar restrictions prescribing certain combinations of
category features, e.g., the combination of particularity, concreteness,
individuality, and subjecthood. I briefly sketch how these restrictions of the
“substance paradigm” or “myth of substance” are reinforced by the standard
readings of predicate-logical constants, viz. the existential quantifier and the
identity sign. Third, I argue that in the context of the substance paradigm
foundational particularism is incoherent. I discuss the current standard
conceptions of particulars as developed in the debate about individuation (bare
particulars, nude particulars, tropes) and show that their main difficulties derive
from the traditional restriction that particulars are so also logical subjects
and/or individuals. Fourth, to show that the traditional linkages of category
features are not conceptual necessities, I sketch the outlines of an ontology
(General Process Theory) based on non-particular individuals. For ontologists in
computer science working with description logic this monocategoreal ontology
based on more or less generic ‘dynamics’ may hold special interest. As General
Process Theory documents, ontologists may well abandon the notion of
particularity: in common sense and science we do reason about items that have a
unique spatial location at any time, but the uniqueness of their location can be
taken to be a contingent affair.